Brighthand says that Cingular is showing off the Treo 650 at CES. Although the Treo 650 was announced over two months ago, so far Sprint is the only carrier selling it. Cingular is supposed to be next, but it’s been taking them longer then expected to stock the thing.

Since I’m an AT&T/Cingular customer right now, and my contract isn’t up yet, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to Cingular’s Treo 650 plans. Unfortunately, I have this feeling that I’m going to get screwed–Cingular is still running AT&T’s old network as a separate network from their own. AT&T users who want to change their old AT&T service plan into a Cingular plan apparently end up needing new SIMs. Since all of AT&T’s phones are locked to AT&T, that means that most people who want to switch from AT&T plans to Cingular plans need new phones. So here’s my problem: I have a family plan with AT&T. If I get a Cingular Treo 650, then I’ll almost certainly need to switch to a Cingular plan for both phones. However, that means that I’d have to replace my wife’s Sony-Ericsson T616 with a new phone, and I’m not very eager buy two phones at the same time. Especially since Cingular will almost certainly be skimpy on the discount, or try to give us a crappy non-Bluetooth phone in exchange for the nice little T616.

I’m waiting until Cingular actually announces the phone before I make any plans, but I suspect that this is going to turn into a major ordeal, and that’s a pity, because the Treo 650 seems like a nice little phone–I had an opportunity to play with one last week, and I was really impressed. The screen is wonderful, the keyboard is good enough, the camera seemed good, and it’s only slightly bigger then the Sony Clie that I carry around now.